If a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The so-called "419" scam (aka "Nigeria scam" or "West African" scam) is a type of fraud named after the article of the Nigerian criminal code under which it is prosecuted. Here is a typical example.

Typically, victims of this scam are promised a portion of a large sum of money sitting in a bank account or in a deposit box at a security company, simply for providing a bank account to transfer the money into or for posing as a relative of a deceased person. Another very common variant promises a lottery prize from an internet lottery.

If recipients fall for the scam they are made to part with thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in "bribes" for local officials, prepayments for courier services or deposits for accounts at (fake) banks before the "partners" disappear without trace. Read more about this type of scam here.

jwSpamSpy, our spam filter for MS Windows 2000 and XP ™, recognizes and filters almost all "419" spam emails. Over 17,000 such emails that were sent to us have been analyzed and archived. jwSpamSpy filters about 200 more "419" mails from our mailboxes per day.

The following addresses were used for 419 scam emails
(last updated:
2019-01-22 00:17
JST)